This invention relates to an apparatus for use in filling sand bags.
Sand bags are often used in military situations or in flooding situations to provide a structurally stable embankment formed from readily available materials.
In most cases of use of sand bags the locating of the sand bags is generally of a temporary nature but requires to be implemented relatively quickly. Thus in the military situation the embankment formed from the sandbags is provided for protection of personnel and equipment and must therefore be quickly deployed so that the personnel and equipment are not left exposed. In the flooding or water control situation, again it is often desirable to deploy the sandbags very quickly since flooding can arise and subside within a few hours.
Up until now the technique generally used in the field for filling of sandbags is a very crude system based upon manual labor using simply shovels and the manual support of the bag so that one person shovels while a second person holds the mouth of the bag open. This is of course very slow and tedious process and thus involves the second person holding the bag open for an extended period of time which is of course tiring.
Machines have been proposed for use in filling sandbags but these have achieved little success in practice and therefore have not been widely adopted.
The old U.S. Pat. No. 121529 (Lum) from 1871 simply discloses a funnel system and stand which assist in supporting a bag for filling but do not significantly increase the speed of filling or the efficiency of the operation so that sand bags can be filled and located much more quickly.
The very similar U.S. Pat. Nos. 3552346 (Garden) and 4044921 (Caverly) disclose sand bag filling systems in which sand is supplied on a hopper of a truck and is discharged from the rear of the truck into a single bag which is positioned at the required location for receiving the sand. In both cases the rate of filling bags is very slow since only a single bag at a time can be filled and then must be moved away from the filling location before a second bag can be filled. This provides a very slow operation which is unlikely to provide bags at a sufficient rate for an emergency situation even when large numbers of persons are available for manual labor.
The patent of Garden requires manual operation of a filling valve and this is of course disadvantageous in that the operator must remove one hand from the bag to operate the valve with the danger of spilling.
The patent of Caverly discloses an arrangement which is relatively complex including a conveyor and filling control system. The device is therefore relatively expensive and is dedicated solely to the purpose of filling bags. It cannot operate at the very high rate required for emergency use and hence is of little value in such a situation.
U.S. Pat. No. 2,463,085 (Byberg) discloses a bagging system for harvested crops in which the crops are discharged into a hopper and each bag in turn moved by a carrying chain system from a bag attachment station, through a filling station to a discharge position. The unit is mounted upon a trailer system so that the unit can be carried across the ground for bagging harvested crops such as onions, potatoes and the like. The system again is relatively slow and does not make efficient use of the large number of persons available in an emergency situation, nor does it fill bags at a rate which would enable the large number of persons available to be efficiently occupied in filling and locating the bags.
U.S. Pat. No. 2548222 (Kindseth) discloses a system for filling bags with a powder material such as flour in which bags are moved past filling stations. This system is of little relevance for the rapid filling of sand bags.